Family Vault

by Charlotte MacLeod

“I thought he looked kind of down in the mouth when he brought the car in just after I came on duty. You don’t suppose it’s flu?”

  “I hope not. I chased him off to bed, and don’t you dare tell him I took the car out by myself tonight. He’d have fits if he knew, but somebody has to go. Must I give you another coupon?”

  “Ah, forget it. Going to be out long?”

  “It’s hard to say. Probably two or three hours.”

  “Well, take it easy.”

  The attendant went back to reading his Mickey Spillane paperback. Sarah eased the Studebaker out into Cambridge Street Circle and headed for the bridge over the Mystic River. She was relieved to see the gas gauge registered almost full. Alexander must have stopped to top it up on the way back. He was good about things like that.

  He was good about everything, too good. Sarah felt her eyes smarting and angrily blinked them dry. This was no time to get emotional. Traffic was a mess for no particular reason except that Boston drivers always go into syncope at the slightest hint of rain.

  Sarah didn’t mind, she’d driven in worse jams than this. In fact, the sheer awfulness of the situation began to cheer her up. By the time she’d got herself untangled and out on Route One, she was feeling some of her usual pleasure in handling the willing little double-ended car.

  However, Ireson’s Landing was a long way up the pike, and by the time she reached their familiar turnoff, her heart was in her soggy boots. She’d forgotten to bring the keys to the house, which meant she would not be able to go in and throw the switch that controlled the outside lights. That didn’t matter a great deal. Thanks to Alexander’s forethought, there was a good flashlight in the glove compartment. It would be a bit spooky with that one little light, but she was a big girl now.

  She was almost to the drive entrance, it was time to blink her directional signal. She hoped to goodness that clown who’d been tailgating ever since she left the highway would see it in time to keep from plowing into her when she slowed down. It was probably some kid who’d never seen a Studebaker before, trying to figure out why the car was being driven in reverse.

  Whoever it was got the message and swerved out around her as she shifted into low gear and started the long, treacherous climb to the house. Uncle Gilbert had kept the drive tarred over while he was alive. She and Alexander were always going to have it repaved, but there was never enough money. By now it was a mine field of potholes and boulders that got heaved up by winter frosts. They spent a good part of every summer trying to smooth it out, but each spring revealed fresh disaster areas.

  Sarah could feel the car slipping and slewing as she hit slick mud or loose gravel. Going down should be an interesting experience, assuming she ever succeeded in getting up. She’d have been wiser to leave the car at the bottom and make the climb on foot, but even the illusion of security it gave her was preferable to being out there alone with the rain and the dark.

  Knowing the terrain and the vehicle as she did, she made the ascent with a few bad scares but no serious mishap, and pulled up against one of the railroad ties that had been laid down to mark the parking area. The moment of truth was at hand.

  She could feel the weight of the brick in her shoulder bag, nevertheless she reached in and touched it to make doubly sure it was there. The chalky hardness was at least something tangible in this streaming nightmare.

  Because Alexander kept the glove compartment so fully stocked with maps, first-aid kit, emergency flares and other things they might conceivably need at some time or other, the flashlight did not come readily to hand. Sarah could have found it easily by turning on the dome light instead of fumbling around in the dark, but the thought of exposing herself inside a lighted coach paralyzed her, which was stupid. Nobody could possibly see up here from the road, and any animal that might be braving the storm nearby would only run away.

  Nevertheless she continued to fumble until the grooved bakelite cylinder snugged itself into her hand. Now she had no further excuse to procrastinate. Sarah zipped up her storm coat as tight as it would go, eased herself out of the car, and started walking toward the Secret Garden.

  She was still chary of showing a light, until wet leaves and sprawling roots made the path so treacherous that she absolutely had to. This was no time or place to sprain an ankle.

  Alexander had been trying for years to get his mother to let him sell off some of the land and ease their financial pressures, but so far the deeds were still in Aunt Caroline’s keeping. The Kelling estate remained one of the largest in the area, with the Secret Garden fully a quarter of a mile from the house. Sarah had never thought it much of a walk before, but tonight the path seemed to have no end.

  In the summertime she’d have all sorts of familiar night noises for company. Now, with her head muffled in the pile-lined hood, all she could hear was rain drumming on poplin that was supposed to be water repellent but was acting more like blotting paper. She could feel wetness soaking through, spreading across her shoulders and down her back. Her feet skidded. She sat down hard, got up and slogged on.

  After a while, Sarah began to giggle. This was such an utterly harebrained thing to be doing, the sort of scrape she and her cousin Beth used to get into when they were youngsters. Beth was out in California now twiddling switches in some television studio, or had been at last report. When she’d got the announcement of Sarah’s wedding to Alexander, she’d scribbled across it, “Best wishes for a speedy annulment” and sent it back. Since then they hadn’t corresponded much.

  Thinking about Beth and summers long ago, Sarah didn’t realize at first that she was walking alongside the wall she’d come to see. Involuntarily, she switched off the flashlight, blasted herself for a coward, turned it on again and got out the brick and her sketch. The match was perfect.

  Now there was no more room for hoping. Sarah let the brick fall among the dead leaves that had drifted against the wall, tore up her sketch and gave the shreds to the wind and the rain. She might as well go home.

  That was when she realized she was not alone. Sarah didn’t know who or what was in the woods with her, she wasn’t sure she’d seen or heard anything, she simply knew. It might be a tramp or a deer or some neighbor’s dog or an old male raccoon, but it was big and it was not far away and she didn’t want to stay here any longer.

  Hampered by bad going, poor visibility, and clingy wet garments, Sarah began to run. She ought to have known better. She hadn’t gone a hundred feet before she tripped and skinned her knee on a rock. Worse than that, she broke the flashlight.

  There was nothing she could do but get up and keep going, relying on instinct and memory to keep her on the path, praying she’d get to the car before anybody or anything got to her. The knee hurt a great deal and she could feel a warm stickiness trickling down into her boot, but she couldn’t bother about that now. Once something grabbed her and she thought her heart was going to stop, but it was only a squirrel briar. She tore herself loose and fought her way on.

  After an eternity, she could make out the great bulk of the house against the gray-black sky. Then the car wasn’t too hard to find. She got in, locked the door, and began to shake. Then she began to scold. A grown-up, married woman going into a blind panic, thinking the bogeyman was after her simply because she got upset at having proved what she’d known all along. That brick meant no more now than it had before she came.

  And no less. Sarah started the car with a jerk. The sore knee was making it hard for her to work the clutch and brake. She ought to fix it up from Alexander’s first aid kit before she tried to drive.

  Later. Somewhere down the road, where there were lights and people. Fool or not, she wasn’t going to sit here one more second. She began to swing out of the parking area before she realized the headlights weren’t on. That was an easy way to commit suicide. Sarah flipped the switch, lighting the path from which she’d just emerged, catching a glint from something metallic, something tiny and square, with a tall, dark shape around it

 
Something like the belt buckle on a man’s raincoat. Perhaps she was not a total fool, after all.

  9

  SARAH WAS FAIRLY BRAVE as a rule, and she’d dealt with trespassers before. She knew she ought to swing around and try to get a proper look at the man, but she just couldn’t. Her only impulse was to get down that precipitous drive without cracking up the Studebaker.

  She was probably alarmed over nothing. The man might be an owl watcher out for a stroll. She and Alexander often went tramping in the rain, and these big estates were always declared open country once the summer people cleared out. He’d have to be an awfully dedicated outdoorsman to enjoy walking in this weather, though, and he must have come from some little distance.

  To get this far, he’d have to come up the drive. For almost a century, the Kellings had been letting the underbrush grow up around the perimeter of their extensive property for the express purpose of discouraging sightseers and picnickers. By now, anybody would need a machete to hack a path through. The only alternative was to climb the long wooden ladder that came straight up the cliff face from the rocky beach some thirty feet below, and who’d attempt that in a citified raincoat on a night like this?

  Sarah began to wonder about the car that had tagged her so persistently. Might it not be parked just up the road? The driver, knowing where she’d turned off, could easily have walked back and followed her slow progress up the bad path on foot, then tracked her to the Secret Garden by the light from her flashlight, though why he’d want to was a puzzle.

  He might be one of those nuts who followed women, in which case she’d been fortunate to get away with nothing worse than a skinned knee, or a tramp looking for a place to sleep, or a burglar. If that was all, good hunting to him. There was nothing in the house worth stealing. With luck, he might set it afire and they’d be able to collect the insurance.

  Whatever he was, she was not about to notify the police there was a man on the place. They’d know who she was, and they might report back to Alexander in Boston about the complaint his wife had lodged, which was the last thing she wanted. Her wisest course was to keep going.

  That in itself was almost more than she could manage. Her knee was hurting worse every time she moved her leg. Her flesh was trying to crawl away from her sodden clothes. If only the heater didn’t take so long to warm up! A wet oakleaf got stuck under the windshield wiper and was blocking her view at every sweep. She absolutely had to stop and get herself straightened out, but where? Not on this lonely road, not in the village where she and the Kellings’ ridiculously out-of-date car were too well-known and too easily noticed now that the season was over. She’d have to stick it out till she got back on the highway.

  Hating the honky-tonks that had encroached on the historic Newburyport Turnpike was part of the Kelling creed, but tonight Sarah would have given her back teeth for a neon sign with a cup of hot coffee under it. The rain was blotting out landmarks, making the familiar route a no-man’s land. The ride took on that eerie quality of timelessness she’d felt on the path. When the longed-for sign did appear, she was so disoriented she forgot to brake before she turned in. Fortunately the parking lot was almost empty. She managed to get the car under control by swinging around to the rear of the building before she went through the plate-glass windows.

  Sweating and panting, Sarah switched on the overhead light pulled up her skirt, and examined her damages. The flesh on her knee was puffed, already purple, crisscrossed with deep scratches that were still oozing blood. Dark red rivulets had dried on her shin. Her panty hose were in tatters and she decided bare legs would be less noticeable. She switched off the light and wiggled out of the clinging shreds of nylon. Even her underpants were damp, so she took them off, too, and held them out in the rain to get thoroughly wet so she could use them as a washcloth to swab off the blood.

  The first-aid kit was a great help. Once she’d mopped up the mud and gore, she swabbed out her wounds with merthiolate, put on a large gauze pad to stop the bleeding, and strapped it in place with adhesive. Alexander had even included a little pair of blunt-nosed scissors to cut the tape. She’d never tease him about being the eternal Boy Scout again.

  Putting on wet boots with no stockings was like stepping into a bucket of shucked clams, but that was the least of her problems. She combed her short hair, looked in the rear-view mirror to apply some lipstick and saw that her face was filthy, found a few clean inches of underpants and wiped it as best she could. She was not aiming to make herself attractive, just to avoid looking as if she’d lost a wrestling match with a gorilla. When she thought she’d got to a point where she was unlikely to attract particular notice, Sarah picked up the bag which felt oddly light now that she’d jettisoned the brick, and went into the restaurant.

  She was lucky enough to find an empty booth well away from the windows, since the place was all but empty. A tired waitress in a bedraggled uniform slouched over to her table.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Black coffee, please, and a chicken sandwich.”

  “No chicken. Tuna.”

  Sarah and Alexander were boycotting tunafish on account of the porpoises, but she was too tired to stand on principle.

  “Fine.”

  “White bread?”

  “I don’t care.”

  She did care. Sarah abominated that squishy, pallid travesty of honest food. It was just that she couldn’t make the effort of saying so. She folded her hands on the clean paper place mat the waitress put in front of her, and sat looking at them, wondering why they were so dirty and whether she ought to go and wash them before she ate. She didn’t notice the man who came in until he slid into the bench across from her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kelling. Mind if I join you?”

  He might as well have hit her over the head. Sarah was so stunned her mind went blank. He noticed.

  “I’m Max Bittersohn. We met at the Lackridges’.”

  “Yes, I—I know. I was just so surprised—”

  “So was I. What brings you so far from home on a lousy night?”

  She tried to force a laugh. It was a pitiable failure. “Oh, I’m not far from home at all. We have a place at Ireson’s Landing, and we’re always running back and forth. I just had to—attend to something.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  Why did he sound so—was it angry? Scornful? Was he wondering what she’d been up to? Did he already know? Could Bittersohn possibly have been the man on the path?

  He was wearing another plain dark suit tonight. It was perfectly dry, so he must have a better raincoat than she. There was a rack near the door with several wet garments on it, all looking about the same. Some had belts, some didn’t. Why hadn’t she been watching when he came in?

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will take your raincoat if you leave it over there?” she ventured.

  The man shrugged. “That’s how I get all my raincoats.”

  He had a smile that was surprisingly gentle and appealing in that rugged face, yet even while he smiled, his eyes stayed fixed on hers with a sad, thoughtful gaze, as though he somehow felt sorry for her. She must present a woebegone spectacle.

  The waitress came back with Sarah’s order and didn’t seem at all surprised to find a man in the booth. “Want something, mister?”

  “Tea with lemon, if you have any.”

  “Beverage without food is forty cents.”

  “The hell it is. Okay, bring me a muffin or something.”

  “Toasted English is all we got.”

  “Great. Drink your coffee while it’s hot, Mrs. Kelling. You look as though you could use it.”

  “Couldn’t you pretend not to notice?”

  She took a sip to steady herself. “This was house-cleaning day, and I am a bit frazzled around the edges. How is your book coming? You never did tell me how you happened to become involved with jewelry.”

  “Oh, it’s a long story,” he replied vaguely. “This errand of yours must have been pretty urgent.”r />
  “Not particularly.” Sarah had to set down the cup because her hands were shaking. “My husband managed to pick up a bug of some kind, so I sent him to bed early. Then I got fidgety hanging around by myself, so I decided I might as well come along and get it over with. Alexander doesn’t even know I’m out.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich so that she wouldn’t have to say any more. It was awfully difficult trying to act nonchalant with those oddly compassionate eyes fixed on her. Were they gray or blue?

  Perhaps Bittersohn was feeling sorry for having frightened her and made her fall. If he had, he jolly well ought to be. With some food and a hot drink inside her, Sarah began to get her courage back

  “And what brings you to these parts, may I ask? It’s an incredible coincidence, our bumping into one another like this, don’t you think?”

  “Not specially.”

  The waitress came back with muffins and tea, and he busied himself fishing the teabag out of the sloppy mug. “Once you’ve met a person, you seem to run into him every time you turn around. Lackridge tells me you’re going to do some drawings for my book.”

  “Does he? He hasn’t told me yet. What is it I’m supposed to draw?”

  “Details of settings, things like that.”

  “It sounds rather dull.”

  Sarah rubbed at her hands and lips with a paper napkin, and started to struggle back into her wet coat. “Harry manages to get a good deal of unpaid labor out of the Kellings, one way and another.”

  She was savagely pleased to see him flush.

  “I don’t intend to let any work you do for me go unpaid for. Look, Mrs. Kelling, I’m on my way back to Boston and I assume you are, too. If you’ll tell me where you park your car, I’ll meet you there and walk you home.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you,” she said as airily as she could manage. “My husband will meet me.”

  “You just told me he’s in bed with the flu and doesn’t know you’re out.”

  “Did I? No, please.”

  She snatched back the check he’d tried to pick up. “Then I’ll no doubt be seeing you again soon in some—unexpected place. Good night, Mr. Bittersohn.”